AN HONEST ASSESSMENT OF MEXICO’S APPARENT PRESIDENT-TO-BE

I don’t say this very often – certainly not in the last couple of years – but the Washington Post has offered us a very honest appraisal of why Andrés Manuel López Obrador is going to be Mexico’s next President.

After two failed attempts, Andrés Manuel López Obrador is on the verge of becoming Mexico’s next president. According to opinion polls, the 64-year-old leftist has a likely insurmountable lead ahead of Sunday’s election, buoyed by widespread anti-establishment sentiment. Sitting in the United States, there’s a temptation to view the Mexican vote through the prism of President Trump, a deeply unpopular figure south of the border. But the support for López Obrador – or Amlo, as he’s commonly called – is far more about revulsion with the domestic status quo than the current occupant of the White House, no matter what he says about a border wall and who will pay for it.

The signature theme of López Obrador’s campaign has been a sweeping message of anti-corruption, including promises he himself has made to forgo the perks of office and convert Mexico’s lush presidential palace into a public park. His opponents, meanwhile, have failed to shrug off the stigma of graft and abuse of power surrounding their parties and remain linked to a mess of ongoing scandals, as well as the spiraling violence surrounding the country’s notorious drug cartels. Outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto and his ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is a widely discredited, lame-duck politician; his appointed successor, José Antonio Meade, is a distant third in polling.

Thank you, Mr. Tharoor, for being honest enough to absolve Donald Trump (who, these days is being blamed for just about everything other than the Lindbergh kidnapping) of what is ailing Mexico and why “Amlo” has become its great hope.

If he can seriously address Mexico’s real issues – its culture of corruption, graft and the pre-eminence of drug cartels in significant parts of the country – he will be a huge hero to his people…and to people like me as well.

The Mexican people deserve far better than what they have gotten from the loud-mouthed, but do-nothing, “leadership” of their past several administrations.